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Thursday, December 27, 2012

Bend It Like Beckham Is My Perfect Movie (I Like Soccer)

It’s a question I get asked a lot, especially by my mother.
If I hate so many movies, and so many things in so many other movies that I
don’t actually hate entirely, then is there any movie in which I find nothing
objectionable? And, more than that, is there any single movie that I think
isn’t just unobjectionable, but also, you know, really good?

In short: what’s my perfect movie?

Now, I can’t answer that universally. People like different
things in their movies, it’s a fact of nature. My perfect movie is probably
someone else’s objectionable mess. But when it comes to that question, after
thinking long and hard about it, I do have an answer. Bend It Like Beckham is my perfect movie.

Allow me to explain why.

Now, to start off with just personal taste stuff, there’s a
reason why I picked this particular movie. In addition to all the really
awesome social stuff, which we will talk about, and the wonderful themes and
fantastic character representations, I like Bend
It Like Beckham because it is a fun freaking movie. Starring Parminder
Nagra, Keira Knightley, Archie Panjabi and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, it’s a
fantastic little indie about an Indian girl in London who just wants to play
professional football (soccer), much against the wishes of her traditional
family.

With Keira Knightley as her best friend, Rhys-Meyers as the
coach who believes in her (and secretly wants to kiss her), and Panjabi as her complicated,
soon-to-be-married sister, the whole story twists through the usual sports
movie clichés, and deftly works in an examination of the second generation
immigrant experience. And it’s funny.

Since I happen to love sports movies, and am very curious
about Indian culture (a friend has a whole theory about why we become
interested in other cultures and what that says about the culture we inhabit,
but it’s too long to go into here), I found this to be a particularly
intoxicating mix of stories. Also it’s about soccer, which I like, and reminds
me just the tiniest bit of The Big Green,
a childhood favorite.

So, for all those reasons, I was pre-programmed to really like
Bend It Like Beckham. What I wasn’t
already prepped for was how freaking good it is.

When it comes to judging a “perfect movie”, or at least one
that meets my standards, it has to pass a couple of basic tests. First, it has
to pass the Bechdel Test. That’s the one about female characters and their
involvement in the plot. This film passes with flying colors. Then, if we get
that far, we do the Race Test, which is just a version of the Bechdel Test with
“character of color” substituted for “female character”. And, finally, we just
scan the film for a minute to see if anything offensive or weird has popped
out. No? Good.

But just passing a few tests doesn’t make a movie “perfect.”
What it does is make it adequate. Yes, it seems harsh to say it, but passing
those tests really is the bare minimum a film can do under the name of being
inclusive. What really counts is how the film deals with the rest of the story.

This is where Bend It
Like Beckham truly shines. Built into the premise of the story are several
large social issues. There’s Jess’ (Nagra) dissociation from her parents’
culture and desire to assimilate into British mainstream footie culture. There
is also her friend Jules’ (Knightley) constant battles with her mother (Juliet
Stevenson) over the meaning and importance of femininity.

There are questions
about what it means to be a woman. There are even more questions about how to
balance the importance of family and culture with the individualistic desire to
strike out for something new.

Without the examination of these issues, Bend It Like Beckham would be a cute
little story that holds no water. No character ever gives a monologue about
these problems (well, maybe once), and no scriptwriter should be so obvious as
to make them overt, but these are the base themes that make the movie work. We
care about Jess because she is a rebel, but we love her because she wants her
family to love her. This movie has depth, and that goes a long way to making it
perfect.

I wouldn’t say that this movie is absolutely perfect for
everyone ever, but in terms of the values that I hold dear, it hits the mark
squarely in the center. It’s about a young girl, who doesn’t just look
different but feels different too, dealing with her difference and coming to
understand that being brilliant at what you do is nothing if you have no one to
support you in it, but also that begging for support will never make you happy.
Superficially, I can say that it’s a movie with multiple strong female
characters, where the lead is a character of color, and I can talk about how it
addresses issues of race and sex in a loving and intriguing way. But that isn’t
why it’s perfect.

This movie is perfect because until I pointed all of that
out to you, you probably hadn’t given it a single thought. You just freaking
liked it.

5 comments:

Basically, she believes that you are drawn to the culture which is most outwardly different from your own, while still staying inwardly similar. Like, she's from Vietnam, and she's obsessed with Scandinavia, a place full of cold, snow, pale blond people and Prog Rock. But inwardly, they're pretty similar in their values and country systems (Vietnam is Communist, Sweden is Socialist). So it's a combination of the exotic and the familiar. I like India because it's warm and colorful and boisterous, as opposed to my native stolid New Englandness. But internally, they're both places very set on family, tradition, and the importance of keeping your culture, even while you progress onwards. Which is similar too.

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